


Iron Crown

by theo_la_dora



Category: Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate universe: faeries, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Faeries - Freeform, I promise, Mildly Dubious Consent, Temporary Amnesia, also laura and elle are the same person in this, because that's important, but happy ending, carmilla is one of the fair folk, iron, laura is human, okay?, or are they?, tw for mentions of blood/torture/violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theo_la_dora/pseuds/theo_la_dora
Summary: Her first touch with reality after a lifetime is a five-inch fall out of thin air as she drops onto the dusty smelling carpet floor in wagon 7 of an intercontinental train across western Canada in torn and muddied clothes, twigs tangled in her hair and a crushed primrose flower in the confines of her left fist.When she wakes up, they tell her that her name is Laura Hollis and that she’s been missing for three years.





	Iron Crown

**Author's Note:**

> i've been in a weird mood recently. don't judge me. grad school's looming.

Her first touch with reality after a lifetime is a five-inch fall out of thin air as she drops onto the dusty smelling carpet floor in wagon 7 of an intercontinental train across western Canada in torn and muddied clothes, twigs tangled in her hair and a crushed primrose flower in the confines of her left fist.

Contact is like a wave rocking back and forth until it crashes over her and her body feels foreign as her muscles contract. Her breath goes jackrabbit fast, scared and hitched like that of a cowering animal.

Her mouth moves endlessly trying to form words that a human throat and tongue can impossibly make – whimpers and cries and cut-off hisses - as she blinks into the overhanging neon light behind concerned passengers’ faces. It pales in comparison to the dawns she’s seen in stars and the only distinguishable noise that comes over her lips after a while is a hoarse and cracked -

“ _Carmilla_.”

* * *

They think it’s her name at first.

She’s in the hospital and under sedation for over 48 hours when her father recognizes her in the police’s unknown person database. When she finally wakes up, hazy and disoriented, they tell her that her name is Laura Hollis and that she’s been missing for three years.

She doesn’t react to the time span as much as to the name – she reels back as if slapped when the two officers use it and insists – no _pleads_ \- they call her Elle. Knowing someone’s true name gives you power over them, she knows that, so she went by many names – the Holly girl, Liebling, the one from above, the wanderer, darling. _She_ especially called her many names – some lovely, some mocking, some unbearably fond - but whenever someone asked her, she always said her name was _Elle_.

Never Laura.

They put her under again when she tries to claw her own heart out.  

* * *

The man that comes to take her home tells her that he is her father but Elle has no concept to the name anymore.

His scent and his smile fill her with warmth and a sense of belonging but she still lines her room with iron nails and pours salt around her bed. She can’t sleep between sheets that smell of cotton and detergent, longs for forests and oceans and the smell of frozen snow but doesn’t dare open the windows despite the chimes hanging above it.

Elle can’t sleep in a bed that doesn’t smell like _her_.

Her father makes her pancakes and explains global politics to her as he reminds her to put on socks when it gets cold outside because anything but summer is a foreign concept to her. He gets her a phone and newspaper subscriptions as well as a couple of cans of bear spray when Elle refuses to relinquish the iron nails even after he almost loses his right foot because of them.

She doesn’t dare venture outside the house. The Hollis home is situated between trees and streams and the ever-stretching sky and _they_ would have loved it here. After she stops taking the meds the doctors forced on her and the numbness fades, she sees strange shadows in sunny places and green vines that move like hands as the Hawthorne tree leaves chime laughs like switchblade knives and Elle knows _they_ ’re here.

_They_ ’re everywhere.

Her father flinches when she begs him to call her Elle but still, he complies.

* * *

 “Hello?”

“Lafontaine?” Elle remembers their name after sorting through pictures on Facebook and it’s the only one that triggers any memories of Silas.

Maybe it’s because they’re so similar to _them_ in a way – third space and truth speaker – yet so completely disparate in their love for logic and technology that it sets them apart. Maybe it’s because Elle’s known only individuals for centuries and has trouble telling apart one human from the other with their stunning lack of colourful feathers, jeweled eyes and double-jointed limbs.

And maybe it’s because they live in a high-tech building in Toronto now and going back to Europe is a well of never-ending nightmares for her that haunt her with longing in every scream and leave her behind with a dry throat and sore eyes.

“Who is this?” they ask and Elle closes her eyes, aware of thorn bush branches bending to form thrones, of faces smiling brightly in the bark of an Ash tree as they watch seedlings play chase around it and she knows they’re all listening despite the St. John’s Wort blossoms on her windowsill and the running water in her shower.

“The girl who tried to take on the university’s corrupt administration with a news podcast,” she tries and hears their quick intake of breath.

“ _Laura_?” they ask quietly, disbelieving and the connection crackles. “Laura, is that you?”

She takes in a deep breath. “It’s Elle now. My name is Elle now.”

* * *

Before she leaves the house, she puts on sunglasses so that _they_ can’t track her eye-movements, turns her clothes inside out and fills her pockets with salt and breadcrumbs. _They_ shy away from the car as if burned and even though her father looks worried he lets her go, hoping that contact with former friends might bring him back the daughter he knew and not the changeling he got.

* * *

It gets better the closer she gets to the city.

The metal structures in every building, the technology and the lack of greenery keep _them_ away and while it feels like she’s breathing in slow-acting poison with every breath, it doesn’t burn her like it burns _them_. Touching the multi-media screen in Laf’s lab should have felt like dunking her hand into a can of acid but all it does is light up the room with a weather forecast and a news sidebar.

“It’s really you,” the owner’s voice sounds from the door where the lab is connected to other office space. Elle whirls around as Lafontaine steps into the room, white lab coat on and googles on their head. “I wasn’t sure even after I found the newspaper articles but you’re really back, Hollis”

Elle considers telling them that she doesn’t know how much of her actually dropped on the floor of that train and how much is still hovering five inches above ground travelling all over Canada but refrains. “I am,” she says a bit stiltedly instead. “How are you?”

“Me?” they look at her askance. “I’m fine, frosh. Got my own lab and Perry’s been entering baking competitions so I’m never out of cookies but I think you’re the more interesting topic here – mysteriously vanished for three years and all that.”

“Three years, yes…” She nods as if to remind herself of the fact. “Only three years.”

“ _Only_ three years?” they echo, looking completely dumbfounded for a second at her lacking sense of time - like that’s even a concern right now. “Laura, you were _gone_. For three years you were missing and we – we all thought you were _dead_. I didn’t tell Perry or Danny about your visit because they would’ve been hysterical and you, you don’t even –“ They stop when they see her quickly paling face. “Where have you been, frosh?”

There is no answer to that, Elle knows that. At least not an answer people want to hear and everyone else including her father stopped asking and marked her down for dissociative amnesia instead when the answers sounded more like hallucinations than reality.

“Gone,” is all she says and then Lafontaine is hugging her.

Elle doesn’t know how to respond to that at all because human touch without illusion is like a cup of cocoa compared to a gram of cocaine and to her surprise tears sting in her eyes as Laf lets go, the taste of easier days and college shenanigans on the back of her tongue.

“What happened in Austria?” Elle asks quietly, shakily wiping at her eyes. “I can’t remember and Facebook tells me…”

“We were on a hiking trip.” Lafontaine looks stricken as they sit down on one of the empty chairs and motion for Elle to do the same. “It was spring break and we decided to hike across the Alps – you, Danny, me and Kirsch – when a debris avalanche surprised and separated us. The three of us… we made it out with scratches and bruises but you… you were gone.”

“You thought I was dead,” she clarifies and doesn’t react at Lafontaine’s flinch. “But I wasn’t. Instead I met –“

There’s a wall inside her mind, a shut off part of her brain that keeps the past three years clinically quarantined from the rest of her memories, scattered though as they are and only let’s through random information about which trees to avoid and what metals hurt the most and that if you ever, ever feel hunted, jump across running water.

Pressing against the wall feels like putting a salt-stained finger in a barely healed wound and Elle hisses as she tries to follow her thoughts over and past the border in her mind but she persists and past the noise and dust of the avalanche there’s a picture of a sun-kissed meadow with a girl in its midst, her hair black like a raven’s wing and blood-red lips stretch into a wide smile as she greets her.

_“Hello, sweetheart.”_

Elle opens her eyes, pupils blown wide.

“I met Carmilla,” is all she says before the wall shuts down again.

* * *

Never trust a Faerie.

That’s what Elle remembers from her childhood fantasy books. Never trust one of the Fair Folk because they cheat and prank and twist until you can’t tell up from down and reality from glamour. They don’t have a conscience – capricious and whimsical, they might find you delightful one day and disposable the next and they don’t care that human bones are breakable, that they bleed blood and not colours.

_Never trust a Faerie_ was a childhood lesson she never thought she needed. Until she was the one who followed one of _them_ down the hill for the promise of a seductive smile and smoky voice, abandoning all that she’s known for the endless summer and celebration.

Never trust a Faerie because love is nothing but an amusing pastime for them.

* * *

“Laura, darling – who is Carmilla?”

It’s Perry who asks her first. Lafontaine sat her down on a couch in a spare room next to the laboratory and called Perry who, armed with cookies and cocoa, now gently touches her shoulder. It’s not the contact Elle reels back from but the name that triggers every flight reflex ingrained in her body and she jerks back as if electrocuted.

“She… she goes by Elle now, Per,” Lafontaine says gently and she’s grateful to them that they don’t question her request and simply go with it despite how much it evidently pains them.

“But…” Perry’s protest goes unvoiced when Elle accepts the cocoa. Cream or milk is a common offering to appease spirits and Carmilla based her nicknames on them because of how much Elle loved sweet things – creampuff, buttercup, cupcake… Interlaced with the occasional _love_ or _Liebling_ , it was her way of calling her without revealing her true name.

Because she knew.

Elle opens her eyes and looks at Perry. The girl might not want to be a witch but it doesn’t help the fact that she _is_ one and witches _know_. They just do. “Keep breadcrumbs in your pockets so they cannot ensnare you. Iron burns them. Salt keeps them away. Primroses and St. Johns Wort protect you. Jump over running water if they chase you-“

“Never move a rock from a field they frequent. Don’t walk on the Faerie’s paths. Don’t open your door after dark even if it’s someone you know,” Perry finishes quietly, a disbelieving sort of sadness in her eyes.

“It’s not just Scotland or Ireland, Perry,” Elle whispers. “They’re everywhere.”

“Never let them know that you can see them if they don’t want to be seen,” Perry whispers as she brushes strands of sweaty hair out of Elle’s face as Lafontaine hovers behind them, obviously concerned. “Never tell them your true name.”

“How long have you really been gone for, Elle?” Lafontaine asks, slowly pulling the googles off their head.

“I don’t know,” Elle says, sounding choked. “How long is forever?”

* * *

She remembers that there was a ball.

Or that they were many balls that all blurred together in this endless celebration – who can count them all, really? - but she knows there were dresses and there was music and a banquet but then, there was always a banquet. Elle wore a dress made of Holly leaves that should have pierced her skin but didn’t, no, instead they shimmered like thousands of jewels woven into the fabric and her cheeks glowed red like the berries of said tree.

Carmilla was surrounded by admirers in her dress made of ever-moving lace and metal pieces, her lips the same red as Elle’s cheeks and she wanted – oh how she _wanted_. More than cheek kisses and dances and poetry whispered under the night sky, she wanted –

_Her_.

So, she marched up to where the girl held court, past the gaggle of admirers and held out a hand in an unspoken offer. There was surprise in Carmilla’s eyes and a flicker of amusement as she handed Elle a cup of something that shimmered golden and tasted spicy, her eyes never leaving the Holly girl as she drank. Her smile brightened with every sip and when Elle sat down the cup, the party was on fire and the girl in black and lace spun her around in ever tightening circles until they were pressed flush against each other.

Elle kissed her first, she remembers that.

* * *

“After the rocks came down, I stumbled around, I guess, and _she_ – Carmilla was waiting there on the meadow in a dark blue dress that flowed and ran like rivers and she was beautiful,” Elle whispers, ignoring Lafontaine’s headshake and sigh of “ _too gay to function_ ” in the background as she cradles her head to ease the throbbing in her temples. “She asked me who I was and I told her - I told her my name.” She gulps. “Then she took me underground.”

“Underground?” Laf asks curiously. “You mean in a cave? Or a burrow?”

“No.” Elle furrows her brow, presses a fist against her forehead as she pushes against the barrier in her mind, pulling out information by threads. The wall around her memories seems less made of stone and more a living, breathing thing like the thorn hedge in the fairy tale that grows faster the more you cut down. “Underground as in mirror world. Upside down. Things that are bigger than they look from the outside. Like a universe curled up in itself, a library of a thousand doors and just one that leads everywhere.”

“So not making much sense then?” they ask dryly, noting the information down anyway.

“Did you expect it?” Elle replies sharply. “For all that they cannot lie, they despise logic even in the way they breathe because they don’t need to. They do it to fool you, to imitate a human because they think it’s… adorable or something - how dependent we are, how desperate and how… breakable.”

She remembers how Carmilla breathed her in. The subtle flaring of nostrils and the blush on her cheeks as if scent substituted a drug and hers was the most potent one of them all. She remembers the soft movements of her ribcage as her breaths lulled Elle to sleep, the steady beat of her heart even between the blaring noises of a raucous party and how utterly, utterly still she was that last time.

Like a statue in the middle of the ocean.

“Going underground is like that feeling during magic hour or the moment right before a car crash. It’s waking up at 3 a.m. and knowing that the shadows in your room are alive and trying not to look too closely.”

“Elle,” Perry asks cautiously. “Did anyone break _you_?”  

Her query reminds Elle of the officer that questioned her once she woke up the second time from whatever medication they’d put her under and all she can do is shake her head. She remembers the revels at the edge of every ball, the girls that danced until their feet were bloody, the boys that smiled dreamily as skin was torn piece by piece from their bodies and all the other unlucky souls that lost their minds with an addiction to pleasure that mere touch couldn’t satisfy. Carmilla would laugh along in delight with the rest of them at the display of distorted bodies and strung-up minds but she’d also always subtly draw Elle away from them as if trying to protect her from harm.

Or simply keep her to herself.

“She kept my bones intact,” Elle whispers and leaves the rest unspoken.  

* * *

When she told Carmilla that she loved her under the endless night sky that stretched and breathed and seemed to blend into her lover’s skin, something flickered in the girl’s eyes before she took out a knife – silver and sharp and crescentic as if she’d taken the moon right out of the sky – and cut out her own heart with it.

It was bloody and warm and still beating as she handed it to Elle with the manner of a cat presenting their owner with a catch and it just kept on beating, there in her hands as she stared at Carmilla in fright and wonder.

“ _Why_?”, the girl asked, cocking her head to the side, the wound on her chest long since stitched up by the wandering midnight across her skin. “ _Isn’t that what humans do? Give their heart to someone else when they’re in love_?”

When they’re in love.

Elle had not heard the implication then, the unspoken exemption to the rule – humans, what _humans_ do - as she put the still beating heart into a locket and fastened it around her neck because what use had Carmilla for a heart that did not need a body to beat?

* * *

The bathroom light is blinding as Elle stumbles across the dusty blue tiles and a plushy bath mat. She blinks at a stray can of disinfectant and a pinstriped bow tie sitting on the basin for several seconds and thinks that she remembers her friends after all.

Lafontaine and Perry took her back home to their apartment and let her crash on the couch partly because of concern for her well-being and the state of the roads and partly because they still look at her like she might disappear again if she just rounds the corner which –

Yes, she gets the trust issues.

Elle thinks it’s a trick of the light at first, the reflection she catches in the mirror but then gravity sets in and something small and solid drops back against her chest. She picks it up with shaky fingers.

It’s a locket.

A locket made of an intricate mesh of metal holding a red stone hanging on a delicate chain from her neck and when she cautiously wraps her fingers around it, she almost drops it as if burned because –

Because it’s still warm.

And when she tentatively holds it up to her ear, fingers clammy and expression panicked, she almost doesn’t believe her own senses.

Because it’s still beating as well.

* * *

“And you really don’t want me to open it?” Lafontaine asks, looking a bit put out as they drop the screwdriver back down on the worktable.

“There’s possibly a _heart_ in there!”, Elle exclaims, her voice wavering on just that edge towards hysteria as she frantically tugs at her hair. “What do you think is going to happen if you open it? Best case scenario, a life sized, still beating organ drops onto your living room floor and gets blood all over the upholstery and I don’t think Perry is going to go for that. No one is going to go for that. In fact, no one is-”

“No one is going to drop organs anywhere,” Perry interjects helpfully at that, her expression nauseated at the mere thought. “Beating or not beating.”

They’re in the living room, the sun just barely rising because Elle had a complete freak-out when hearing the steady beat of Carmilla’s heart for the first time in months and the three of them are in various states of dress and disarray and not to mention wakefulness. Perry’s puttering around making cocoa and pancakes, her curls bobbing up and down frantically as Lafontaine rights the patch they’re wearing over their left eye which –

What?

“Yes, but aside from the possibility of giving Perry something to soak in club soda,” Lafontaine starts up again, exchanging the patch for a steampunk inspired magnifying glass and takes a closer look at the locket that Elle had refused to take off, “what else might happen?”

“What else might… uh - _I don’t know_ – Maybe it’ll open a black hole and suck out our souls through our mouths or maybe it creates a rip in reality and shifts part of your apartment building fifteen minutes into the future! Maybe it even plays opposite day with our bodies or just blasts Mozart really loudly for the next fifty years – take your pick. _They’re_ not big on consistency.”

“So basically, you’re carrying the equivalent of a magical nuclear bomb around your neck,” Laf summarises, “and it’s ticking. Great.”

“Did you miss the part where she gave me her real, _actual heart_ in the proverbial jar?” Elle asks them incredulously.

“I’d recommend not shattering it then,” Laf deadpans before a curious expression crosses their face. “Hey, wait – so you do _remember_ her giving it to you?”

“I dreamed about it,” Elle admits reluctantly. “About her cutting it out of her chest. Then I woke up and the locket was hanging from my neck.” She glances up nervously. “But how did she get to me _here_? This place would be toxic for her.”

“I don’t think she did.” Lafontaine let go of the locket in favour of shining into Elle’s eyes with a pocket flashlight. “Remember your memory gaps?”

Elle blinks at her, clearly unimpressed with the pun.

“Yeah, yeah, not what I was aiming for,” they brush it off. “But maybe these gaps are not rooted in trauma but something else…”

“Because kidnapping isn’t traumatic enough to account for amnesia?”

“I didn’t say that but there might be another reason for it.” They shut off the flashlight and just look at her, considering, for a minute. “Because the way you tell the story – you can remember things, frosh, it’s just seems very painful as if someone’s keeping memories from you on purpose so-”

“You think someone kept the locket from her on purpose as well?” Perry interjects, frowning as she hovers behind the two of them.

“I _think_ ,” Lafontaine stresses, “that someone put a blockade in Laur- _Elle’s_ mind and things like the locket have been affected by that glamour, too. Quite likely that other stuff will show up as well if you start remembering more.”

“You mean more time bombs?” Elle asks sceptically and not only a little scared.

“Perhaps not-,” Perry starts. “Elle, she gave you her _heart_. That’s not – Even for _them_ that’s more, it’s just … _more_.”

“She cut it out like I’d cut off my hair,” Elle insists, wrapping her arms closer around herself. “She didn’t need it.”

“Yes,” Perry says patiently with the manner of a school teacher explaining subtraction to a stubborn six-year old. “But you also said that this place would be toxic for her, Elle, but this thing… it’s… it’s still beating.”

“So?”

Perry lets out a long-suffering sigh. “It’s not a simple glamour, love. Whatever it is you’re carrying around your neck is… much, _much_ more powerful than that.”

“So, yes, nuclear time bomb thing,” Lafontaine nods. “We covered that. But what are we going to do with it? Summon the magical kidnapping lover with it and exorcise her? Burn it so Elle here loses her demons? Give it to the next magical being like a return delivery to the underworld?”

Elle has grown progressively paler with each suggestion and looks as close to nausea as one can get before vomiting but Perry sports a determined tilt to her head and an almost smile as she announces that “no, nothing quite so extreme, Lafontaine, but it might help us get some information. I know just the person to ask.”

* * *

 The otherworld only had a tenuous concept of time and none of space at all. Places and music and clothing all changed on a whim – what you wanted, whenever you wanted it – and so there was a pattern, Elle knows there was a pattern - wild parties fueled by spicy, golden drinks and heart-beat-mind thumbing music would end in tighter and tighter growing dances and then their dresses would mesh and the surroundings change to silk sheets and night sky and Elle would lay there splayed open as Carmilla moved down her body.

Skin on skin was the most real thing in a world made of fantasies and as her blood pounded in her ear with every push of Carmilla’s fingers inside her, her teeth latched onto Elle’s neck in this desperate soaring race, she’d think that she could get lost in this – that maybe she already did.  Carmilla’s eyes would grow steadily darker with every moan, her lips swollen and kiss-bitten between her teeth and the black would overtake the white in her eyes as Elle threw her head back, heels pressing against the silk sheets and hips rising upwards for more, more, _more_ –

When Elle flipped them over, there’d be a flash in Carmilla’s eyes, the fully black eyes blinking humane once more and she’d think her vulnerable for a second. She’d kiss her slowly this time as if determinedly pressing past any glamour, worshipping and bruising skin that was nothing but illusion and still feel proud when the red marks showed.

She’d cherish her losing control and listen to the lie with fire in her gut as she’d whisper her name like a series of promises into the inside of Carmilla’s thigh.

Because if this was all just wishful thinking, maybe that one would come true as well and Elle kept on tossing silver coins.

* * *

The three of them are standing in an elevator leading up to the penthouse of a five-star hotel and silently listen to the elevator music playing an upbeat tune.

“So…,” Lafontaine finally breaks the awkward silence. “The witch likes to live in style, I take it?”

“She has opinions on décor,” Perry agrees. “And human sacrifices. Minimal and no blood on the carpet.”

“Does that refer to the decoration part or the murder part?” Elle asks, caught somewhere between amusement and horror as Laf nervously cleans their glasses once again. “Because that sounds like a lifestyle motto you should be wary of.”

“It’s not only the motto you should be wary of,” Perry warns them. “Don’t touch anything in that apartment unless you fancy spending the next three weeks trapped inside a crystal vase.”

“So, we’re asking the evil witch for advice,” Laf sums up their plan. “ _Why_ are we asking the evil witch for advice?”

“Because she can in fact give you some,” a new voice drawls just as the elevator doors open to the breathtaking view of an apartment overlooking the Toronto skyline and a dark-skinned woman in French haute-couture arching a questioning eyebrow at them.

“Goldfish, Lola,” the woman says chidingly, eyeing Lafontaine and Elle with obvious irritation. “What on earth made you decide to bring two _goldfish_ into my home? Am I supposed to feed them now?”

Perry opens her mouth to respond but it’s Elle who answers.

“ _Mattie_?” she whispers, rubbing her temple with the heel of her hand as pain explodes through her head because she knows the woman, has seen her somewhere before. “Mattie, is that you?”

“The Holly girl,” Matska Belmonde sighs, expression shifting from irritated to quietly considering in a matter of seconds. “So, no pellets for you then, I take it.”

* * *

“Drink up.”

Elle eyes the glass Mattie hands her with barely concealed distrust and only accepts when Perry nods imperceptibly from the other side of the sleek black leather couch they’re sitting on. The swirling green liquid that looks like very strong Sencha tea smells like her Dad’s herb garden with just a hint of sulphur and tastes as expected. Meaning, Elle has to forcibly keep herself from gagging and vomiting the whole thing up immediately.

Mattie curls her lip in disgust. “I thought you might be a tad more impressive. The Holly girl – Good gracious, they should’ve focused more on the girl part of that title, moppet. You’re barely more than a _child_.”

Elle glares at her, refraining from spitting the evil concoction at the woman who regards her as if she’s a cockroach doing something as astounding as solving math problems designed for six-year-olds.

You know, interesting enough for local news stations but nothing national television will feel the need to cover.

“And yet, you’ve got them all in a titter. The little Holly girl who’s ensnared the Queen’s red right hand and made her fall in _love_.” Mattie laughs as if that’s the most delicious joke she’s heard in centuries and Elle starts contemplating not just spitting but throwing the glass in her face as well.

At least the concoction helped ease the pain.

“She’s not in… Carmilla’s not in _love_ ,” is all she manages to stammer out instead. “Not with me at least.”

Mattie rolls her eyes. “She gave you her heart, wandering girl. How much more literal do you want to get? Not to mention that I saw you two at the Midsummer night’s dance and if that wasn’t the most _sickening_ thing I’ve ever-”

“Wait, you saw them?” Lafontaine interjects. “What in the seven seas _are_ you?”

“Certainly not a fish,” Mattie says, voice dripping with disdain. “No webbing whatsoever but keep asking and you’ll find yourself in an underwater world filled with really angry shrimp. Ninety seconds, Lola,” she sighs, turning towards the other witch in the room. “Why did you bring me people with the attention span of a goldfish, again?”

“For information,” Perry replies calmly. “And from the look of it, you might be able to fill Elle’s memory gaps here.”

The witch rolls her eyes and lets the bracelets around her wrist jangle as she presses her thumb and little finger to each side of Elle’s head. “Less gaps and more a badly weeded garden, I’d say,” she informs them. “It’s not impossible to get past it but definitely painful and a rather Sisyphean labour. It lets enough information pass to keep you informed and safe from the Fair Folk – You can probably see them, right?”

“Ever since I got off the medication the doctor’s put me on,” Elle nods, squirming in the woman’s grasp. It’s not painful exactly but there are definitely more fun pastimes than this.

Knitting, for example. Why can’t they all just do some knitting? Or embroidery. She needs new curtains and who’d object to some crafts, anyway?

Evil people who torture other people for a living. That’s who.

“The little monster probably gave you some kind of serum the first time she took you underground, I suppose,” Mattie says knowingly. “Good thing she also put that warning in your head – otherwise _they_ would have taken a hot poker and burned your eyes out with it as soon as they discovered your little ability. Can’t have mortals have the sight, you know. All the wars that have been fought because of it. _So_ unpleasant.”

“You think Carmilla did this?” Elle asks, finally pulling free from the woman’s hand. “To get rid of me?”

Mattie sighs exasperatedly. “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up – wherever on earth you did wake up?”

“I woke up in the hospital,” Elle says slowly. “And before that… the train.”

“And before _that_?”

Elle’s face twists with pain as she tries to remember and Perry starts humming lowly to take away some of it. “There was a… a gathering, I think. A lot of people around us and Carmilla… she was scared.”

“Further, little doll.”

Elle curls her hands into the expensive leather of the couch, ignoring Mattie’s hiss about her nails wrecking the material. “She said that this has been going on for too long, that it needs to stop, that human pets were fine but that she’d need to dispose of me because… _how gauche, darling_ ,” Elle’s voice took on a condescending, almost mocking tone as her eyes rolled back into her head, baring the white, “ _you fell in love_.”

“Who said that, Laura?” Perry asks, lightly touching her shoulder. “ _Who_?”

A face so terrible and beautiful at the same time flashes before her eyes – a woman riding atop a wolf with chimes sounding in the air, her body an open ribcage with knives sticking out of it and black crow’s wings woven in her hair – and a white-hot sliver of pain bursts through her head, causing Elle to fall back screaming.

“The queen,” she whispers hoarsely, body spasming. “The queen was there.”

And then she blacks out.

* * *

The last thing Elle remembers is Carmilla’s face before the guards took her away.

Her profile shone stark against the red light of the torches and her smile was almost apologetic as she wrapped a hand around the locket hanging from Elle’s neck and for a moment Elle thought that Carmilla was going to save her.

“ _Sweet dreams, Laura,_ ” the girl said instead and when she took her hand away, the locket was gone and the thorn hedge grew in her mind. Something shattered inside Elle and as the guards dragged her away towards the surface, she cursed her to hell and back for her betrayal, her screams echoing from the badly lit stone walls and Carmilla –

Carmilla said nothing at all.

* * *

“So, you think the queen punished them both?” Perry’s voice slowly filters through Elle’s consciousness like sunlight through the blinds.

“Seems like the most plausible explanation to me.” That’s Mattie’s voice. “The queen never liked her glittering girl’s fascination with the human race and her fascination with dear Elle here doubled that little soft spot by a large margin, so the queen decided to teach her favourite a little lesson in obedience. Take her memories and watch her suffer, watch her not remember you and learn who you truly belong to – that sounds like our dear Mama.”

“Mama?” Lafontaine interjects from somewhere close to Elle. “What are you-”

“Where do you think magic comes from, little mad scientist?” Mattie’s voice is mocking. “We’re all related to the queen in some way - some of us a little closer than others though I wouldn’t quite call it family. Much too estranged for that.”

“How reassuring.”

“It should be. Because that inside knowledge might give you some ideas where to start looking for missing lover girl before the little moppet over there suffers some actual damage.”

“So, you think Carmilla’s still alive?” Elle’s voice is rough and cracked at the edges as she sits up slowly from where she’s been sleeping on the expensive couch, feeling like she’s been run over by a fire engine. 

Mattie looks up, a glass of red wine in one hand. “Not dead at the very least, dolly. Your little heart over there is kind of her life insurance.”

Elle reachea for the locket almost on impulse and finds it still warm, still beating. “So, she didn’t betray me?”

“You know what’s funny?” Mattie looks like the cat that got the canary and Elle gulps. “The little monster always told me that her name was _Mircalla_ and you know how peculiar that lot is with names.”

“She had a knack for anagrams,” Elle mutters quickly, not daring to –

“Not that particular one though,” Mattie muses. “Never heard her call herself _Carmilla_ before. Beautiful name, though. Very fitting.”

“What are you-”

“But I’m not here to assuage your crippling romantic doubts or whatever it is that makes you look like a kicked and drowned puppy-,” the witch visibly shudders at the thought, “but to find the missing Juliet to your… Giulietta.”

“And _why_ are you so interested in that?” Lafontaine demands to know, clearly not impressed by the woman’s various threats of physical and mental harm.

“Consider it my good deed for the century,” Matska says off-handed. “And I’m rather fond of the little monster. Questionable taste in love interests notwithstanding.”

“So, where do you think we can find her?” Elle asks slowly, still adjusting to the fact that they have to find Carmilla now, that she didn’t betray her, that there’s a possibility that – She doesn’t let her hopes go up too high, instead she wraps a hand around the locket, letting the faint heat settle into her bones as her insides flutter.

She didn't betray her.

“Well, _Carmilla_ ,” Mattie says the name quite pointedly, “is a rather powerful being herself. I didn’t call her the queen’s red right hand for nothing, children. So, if she’s trapped then probably somewhere involving a lot of iron and technology, somewhere like-”

“Somewhere like a train,” Lafontaine interrupts her, understanding dawning on their face. “Somewhere like the train where they found Laura.”

* * *

Figuring out in which train Elle was found months ago and where the thing is now turns out to be the easiest part.

Breaking and entering, however, puts them in a bit of a bind until Lafontaine pulls out their science power tools and ninja suit and Mattie regards the whole thing with an oh-don’t-be-ridiculous attitude while Perry frets and Elle does her freak-out in between preventing the former two from making the front gates of the train depot explode and the latter from alerting the authorities to their plans with her yelling, so it’s –

_Diverting_.

That’s the best way to describe the events leading up to them finally entering the train that has quite literally transported her back to reality all those months ago because she doesn’t realize how close she is to her own heart until she’s standing right above it.

It's been here the whole time.

* * *

“And you really think she’s _here_?” Perry’s nervous voice hangs scattered in the dark train wagon, only illuminated by flashlights and Mattie’s shimmering dress.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Lafontaine shrugs as they take some kind of super-laser thing or other to cut up the train floor. “Why else would Laura – sorry, Elle – be dropped off here? It’s the perfect location, really.”

“But how would they get her here?” Elle asks, stomach tight with worry. “They can’t even enter this place without burning.”

“The queen can,” Mattie says solemnly, looking so out of place that it's almost hilarious again. “She’s the only one and if angry enough, she might even see to the punishment herself. Besides, I doubt anything less than an iron cage would’ve kept the little monster from you, moppet. She’s much too soppy for anything like pragmatism.”

Elle doesn’t reply, just watches the red-hot laser beam do its work, vision blurry and throat tight. 

“I think there’s something here,” the scientist announces after several long minutes and points at the space at the far end of the wagon right across the aisle. “Can you-”

A quick whisper and an aborted gesture from Mattie has the floor roll itself up like a particularly well trained carpet and Elle almost cries out when she sees –

“ _Carmilla_!”

“Do not touch her!” Mattie’s voice thunders through the wagon and even Laf steps back from the gap in the floor that looks like a grave. “Oh darling,” the witch says softly as she crouches down next to it in her expensive dress and coat. “What have you done now?”

There’s no answer and Elle feels like crying. Mattie stretches out a hand for Perry and the girl takes it, positioning herself next to the other woman as they slowly begin an incantation to –

Whatever it is that needs to be done.

“Here,” Mattie says after a long while and the woman looks exhausted as she slowly stands up, supporting herself on the empty train seats. Perry doesn’t look any better. “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do, she’s not responding and-”

Elle flies to the open grave and almost throws herself at the oh so familiar body lying there. Carmilla is – her body is badly bruised and burned with bones sticking up in wrong places and at the wrong angles and she can’t be, she just can’t –

“Is she dead?” Elle sobs out as she frantically tries to find a pulse, but of course there is none – not a human body, not a human pulse and her skin is cold and –  “No,” she pleads, “please, please, _no_ … Carmilla, you can’t…”

“Laura,” Perry tries gently, exhaustion plain in her voice but Elle doesn’t listen.

“You can’t be dead, Carmilla,” she begs, cradling the girls head and neck in her hands, that broken, broken neck and it lies limply in her grasp. “I just got you back – you can’t leave me here after all this time. No, _please_ – I love you, you know I do.”

“Laura…”

“You can’t take my heart with you,” Elle sobs. “Because I still got yours and what should I do – what am I supposed to do with –“ She takes the locket from her neck, takes it off for the first time in centuries and puts it around her lover’s neck. “There,” she says, voice choked with the slowly creeping paralysation of having no option left. “You have it back now, your heart…” Another crying fit shakes her body as tears soak the limp form of her lover, of her love, of the one she went underground for. “Carmilla, it’s _Laura_. I’m here and you can have your heart back now.

_You can have it back now_.”

There’s no response. There never is.

At some point Laf tries to drag her away, sometime later it’s Mattie but Laura doesn’t let go just cries into the bruised shoulder of the one she loves, has always loved and presses the locket against all those broken ribs. “My love,” is all she whispers. “Carmilla, my love.”

It gets warmer. Laura doesn’t register it at first and when she does, she doesn’t care because she’s not going to go away, won’t listen to anyone who tells her to until –

Until the body under her moves.

She thinks she’s hallucinating it at first – wishful thinking taking its final toll – but then an arm moves and wraps around her body, warm and solid and then there’s a groan and she scrambles up, the tears in her eyes clouding her vision as she blinks down at –

“Carmilla!”

The girl in question opens her eyes, warm and brown and _human_ , blinking confusedly at first before they settle on Laura.

“Well, that was a trip,” she mutters before Laura falls into her arms and doesn’t let go.

* * *

“So, how… how are you?” Laura asks cautiously as she slowly tiptoes closer to the giant bed with the fluffy pillows that stands in Mattie’s guest bedroom, the white sheets emanating a faint glow in the twilit room.  They’ve put Carmilla there after _somehow_ – and god knows how – carrying her back to the witch’s penthouse.

The girl is heavier than she looks.

At her question, the puff of dark hair atop the pearl grey pillow moves, revealing tiredly blinking dark eyes and a sceptically arched brow that has Laura on the verge of crying again because it so _perfectly_ conveys Carmilla’s opinion on the subject.

She laughs instead.

“Stupid question,” Laura sobs between two smiles. “I know, it’s just-”

The look on Carmilla’s face changes from amused to alarmed in two seconds flat and she moves to get up but can’t and has to settle for reaching out with one hand for Laura because she’s still so very, very weak.

“- it’s just that you’re here and I… I thought that you left me and you… you were there _all the time_ and I…”

“Cupcake…” The hoarse and cracked voice makes Laura stop with what promised to be a rather long tirade and Carmilla puts an end to it with another shake of her head and the repeated motion to please, _please_ come closer. “Come here,” she whispers and Laura lets out another little sob as she practically falls on the bed and crawls closer to her love.

The smell of the forest still clings to her, faint perhaps, accounting for all that new humanity that Mattie diagnosed her with. “Love is a human concept and the iron burned almost everything that wasn’t human. Clearly, she couldn’t die because you still had her heart but it was a close thing,” the woman said, gesturing with yet another glass of red wine while Perry frowned in the background. “My guess is that the little monster is for most purposes human now but with some magical qualities that might distinguish her as a witch of some talent. And there’s the heart of course.”

The heart. Yes. The heart that’s still inside the locket that Carmilla now carries around her neck and Laura can’t help but let her fingers brush against it.

“I thought you’d taken it,” she whispers and Carmilla lets out a soft noise of protest.

“Couldn’t let mother get her hands on it,” the girl mutters and burrows her nose closer into Laura’s hair, breathing her in once again. “Couldn’t take it back.”

“I’m sorry for thinking that you’d leave me just like that, Carm. When you even gave me your name,” Laura whispers. With the thorn hedge in her mind slowly disappearing, she remembers more and more of all these centuries she’s spent down there and she feels so very, very _old_.

And yet…

“I’m sorry for making you think I could, Liebling.” Carmilla’s hand slowly moves up her back and neck before tangling in her hair. “I missed this.”

“Couldn’t sleep without you there,” Laura whispers in agreement, feeling her bones slowly relax. “This world is so different and without you… it felt like someone cut a hole in me.”

“I had several drilled in to me,” the girl grins for the first time, sharp teeth and sardonic expression and Laura fights a groan of exasperation even as guilt twists her stomach. “Wanna make a competition?”

“You’re impossible.”

“You’re _my_ impossible.”

“And cheesy.” Laura blinks up at her, a smile tugging at her lips despite the exhaustion. “Why didn’t I know you were cheesy?”

“Love,” Carmilla whispers. “I gave you my heart and the whole damn night sky. _Literally_. How did you not know?”

“It was cute at the time.”

Carmilla pouts and her lips are soft and pink and Laura wants to kiss them. “So, I’m not cute anymore?”

“You’re the cutest,” Laura mumbles, letting her hand slowly push up under the cotton shirt Mattie gave Carmilla and relishes in the feel of warm skin under her fingers. She knows that things are not going to be easy moving forward, there is her Dad and finishing school and how to fit into this strange, strange world, not to mention an angry faerie queen on the lose but for now – for now they can just be. “My absolute favourite.”

“And dangerous.”

Laura nods, hiding her smile in Carmilla’s neck. “Of course. Also, human.”

“Ah yes,” the girl sighs. “There’s that, too. You’re going to show me your world as well? Give me the night sky and all that?”

“Maybe I’ll just show you Times Square,” Laura mutters. “Or Paris. You’ll love Paris. After all, you do already have my heart, don’t you?”

Carmilla’s answer is soft, barely audible and Laura takes it back into blessed, pain free sleep to the steady sound of her love breathing.

“I do.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> the reference to "third space" in laf's description is thanks to a lovely fic written by [possibilist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist) that i can only recommend reading. 
> 
> you can also find me on [tumblr](https://theo-la-dora.tumblr.com/)


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